"Stolen" cellphones keep GRP on toes

“I’ve had subscribers lodge complaints of missing phones coming again a few days later wanting too file FIRS, saying it was stolen,” said a senior GRP official at the Kurla police station.

Each of the eight GRP stations in Mumbai receives an average of three complaints of missing mobile phones a month. A total of 299 mobile phone `thefts’ have been recorded this year, with Mumbai Central alone toting up a staggering 104 cases.

Handsets are replaced by insurance companies only when they arestolen. GRP officials say companies advise subscribers who have lost their phones to report them as being stolen. A Max Touch spokesperson who spoke to Express Newsline said previously, the company paid the insurance premium. This changed from April this year with handsets being insured and insurance companies directly dealing with subscribers. “The subscriber now gets back to the insurance company when he loses his phone and is compensated as per his policy.”

There are no losers when an insured phone goes missing, say police. The insurance company gets its percentage, the company gets to sell another instrument and the subscriber gets his phone replaced for practically no extra cost.

But the GRP is the one left holding the baby. “It pushes our crime statistics up and we get enquiries from our higher authorities,” says a senior police inspector of a railway police station.

The GRP says it can take action under the Indian Penal Code against subscribers for lodging false cases, but doesn’tsince such cases are difficult to prove. Police also suspect that subscribers are using insurance benefits to acquire two phones for the price of one.

To curb this practice, the railway police have suggested that a mobile phone should not be replaced unless the insurance company gets a final report from the police. “We feel this will discourage a lot of false complaints,” says Superintendent of Police (GRP) K Ramachandran.

Railway police admit to the existence of gangs who steal mobile phones and sell them for half the cost in the grey market. Of the 299 lost phone cases, the GRP has solved 10, arresting 12 persons.

But stolen phones make up a small fraction of the instruments that are lost by careless subscribers, say police. Subscribers lose their phones when they wade through crush hour wearing the handset on their belts or in their pockets instead of the safer option of putting it in a handbag.